In Oleana, thatÕs the place IÕd like to be,
And not in Norway drag the chains of slavery!
OleÑOle-ÑOle oh! Oleana!
OleÑOleÑOle oh! Oleana!
Ditmar Mejdell (1853), in a satirical ballad.

Throughout the better part of a century many thousands of
Norwegians were deeply stirred by the call of American opportunity.
Their response to the alluring future that beckoned from this
side of the sea was thought by more sober observers to bear
the marks of madness. It was commonly said that they suffered
from "America fever," a highly contagious disease
which spread with epidemic speed from man to man, from valley
to valley, until it had enveloped all Norway and deeply changed
the destinies of her people. In 1843 Henrik Wergeland, one
of her great poets, wrote that "it is the most virulent
disease of our times, a national bleeding to death, a true
madness, since those whom it possesses will listen neither
to their own nor othersÕ reason; they scorn all examples,
they toss aside the present in favor of a still more threatening,
uncertain, darkling future, and [2] let themselves be driven
into a maelstrom of unknown sufferings." The pioneers
of Norwegian emigration permitted themselves to differ with
this and many other judgments in similar vein. Little by little
they beat a path through the prejudices and difficulties that
surrounded emigration, with the result that Norway became
one of the countries which contributed most liberally of its
brain and brawn to the building of AmericaÕs new Northwest.

I. INCITEMENTS TO EMIGRATION

Many penetrating studies have been made of the causes and
backgrounds of this movement. But the entire complex of causes
which historians have analyzed was compressed by the emigrants
themselves into a single idea: the hope of social betterment.
This hope could mean different things to different men: into
it were woven strands of religious dissent, escape from personal
problems, adventurousness, a dream of political freedom. But
economic advantage counted for most. To the first Norwegian
emigrants this was synonymous with the ownership of land,
the only basis of social prestige which they thoroughly understood.
As the tide of emigration swelled and the character of Norwegian
society changed, America also came to mean gold. But in either
case the decision to emigrate was not exclusively based on
a cold calculation of economic advantage. It was a break with
tradition, a gamble with the future, a cutting of social ties
which one might almost term a revolutionary act. Those who
were well adjusted and only stood to lose in social prestige
naturally did not emigrate. Those, on the other hand, who
were too ignorant or sluggish to have their imaginations fired
by the hope of America also stayed at home. Economic considerations
alone might easily have driven 95 per cent of the Norwegian
people to emigrate; instead we find that NorwayÕs population
actually tripled during the period of emigration. [3]

No major social catastrophe, such as famine, persecution,
revolution, or war was responsible for touching off the movement
of emigration. It began, as one early writer put it, "prosaically
and unconsidered, like the great changes in the earthÕs surface."
Shortly after the Napoleonic Wars, which brought Norwegian
independence in their train, intimations came to Norway that
other peoples were finding an increasingly attractive haven
in America. The Irish had begun swarming to America from 1816
on, driven by famine, over population, and misrule. Close
on their heels came the Germans, eager to escape from the
Metternich reaction and to pioneer on the rich farm lands
of the Mississippi Valley. It is known that German writings
on America helped to spread the dream of emigration in Norway.
But the immediate impulse came to Norway from England, which
had been sending a steady stream of new settlers to America.
The first migration from Norway began in Stavanger, in that
corner of the country which faces England; its leader was
a man who had been converted to Quakerism in England.

These stimuli found their response in Norway earlier than
in the rest of Scandinavia. In part this was due to NorwayÕs
position as an Atlantic nation, which eased the problem of
transportation. In the days of sailing vessels most emigrants
were carried in Norwegian ships. But it was also a direct
consequence of growing dissatisfactions which we shall have
to consider more closely.

The Norway of the first emigrants was a far less democratic
and progressive nation than it has since become. It was, in
fact, a rural, secluded, preindustrial country. In 1825 nine
out of ten Norwegians lived in the countryside, making their
livelihood from dairying, farming, lumbering, or fishing.
Most of the farms were self-contained economic units, which
since time immemorial had had to do the entire job of feeding,
clothing, and housing their inhabitants. The whims of nature
were more significant to these people than [4] international
market conditions. The rural folk were a proud, freeholding
peasantry, literate and Lutheran, but without much share in
the government of their country. Their horizon was restricted,
but they were gradually awakening to their potential political
strength.

The administration of the country was almost wholly in the
hands of the official class Ñ a well-educated, conscientious
caste of public servants. They prided themselves on their
democracy, for they were not a titled nobility, and they had
given their country the most liberal constitution in Europe.
But there was nevertheless a canyon of social difference between
them and the rural population they administered. Their culture
was urban and European, and their speech avoided the local
"vulgarisms" of the common people. The contrast
was sharply pictured by an emigrant who had chafed under the
restrictions imposed on his own advancement: "I grew
up in a place where I had the opportunity of seeing the young
sons of the pastor, the judge, the captain, and the storekeeper
being educated by a private tutor, and it was undoubtedly
the sight of these well-dressed, carefree, lighthearted lads,
who had nothing to do but play and gather knowledge, which
first caused the painful question to force its way into my
heart like sharp steel: ÔWhat have I done, and what have they
done, that there should be so great a difference between us?Õ
And when they sneered at my torn clothes and laughed and pointed
at me and cried, ÔMy, look at him!Õ as I plodded along, bent
under some heavy burden with my nose towards the ground, then
I wept and swore and boiled."

Around 1830 a rural opposition reared its head in the national
parliament, challenging the established privileges of the
officials. The countryfolk also got a religious hero in Hans
Nilsen Hauge, a lay preacher whose religious dissent had brought
him persecution and a long prison confinement. Equalitarian
ideas were seeping into Norway and [5] weakening the position
of the upper class; the humility which the peasant was supposed
to show was no longer being offered with the same willingness
as before. In 1837 the country-folk were granted local self-government,
the first great for ward step in their political education.

A crucial stimulus to change was the startling jump in population
after 1815. Vaccination, improved sanitary conditions, the
potato, and other factors reduced infant mortality to such
an extent that between 1815 and 1865 the Norwegian population
doubled in numbers. But the country was ill prepared to support
over 835,000 new inhabitants. The number of farm owners increased
only 27 per cent during this period, and the country lacked
capital for large-scale industrial development. Meanwhile
the number of landless agricultural laborers tripled. Statistics
show that in 1845 there was an abnormally high proportion
of young people of working age, 20Ñ30. A vast reservoir of
manpower was being created, potentially dissatisfied persons
who were attached to Norway by no ties of land ownership,
security of employment, or social influence. To them the liberal
constitution of 1814 had somehow failed to bring the social
and economic elysium which its creators had envisaged.

At the middle of the century the tide began to turn. A series
of general European stimuli helped to set Norwegian society
in motion. With the revolutions of 1848, the repeal of the
British Navigation Acts in 1849, and the Crimean War in 1854
began a phenomenal expansion of shipping and a rapid industrialization
of Norwegian society. Within the decade after 1845 Norway
got such modern institutions as railroads, telegraph lines,
general mail service, public agricultural schools, textile
mills, commercial banks, and insurance companies. She also
got her first labor movement and the stirrings of a liberal
political party. The farmers ceased producing everything for
themselves and began sending their products to market. They
were no longer little kings in [6] their domain, but were
becoming slaves of the business cycle. Education and the new
mobility led to increased demands on life, to difficulties
of financial adjustment, and a regrouping of population. Money
grew in importance; debts and taxes began accumulating; prosperity
was followed by depression. The land was full of new problems,
both for the landless laborer who was no longer wanted, and
for the small farmer whose soil lacked the productivity which
the new age demanded.

The note of restlessness is clearly to be heard in the writings
of Norwegian authors from the 50Õs and 60Õs. It finds vigorous
expression in the novels of Bjørnson, which were widely
read by Norwegian countrypeople both at home and after their
emigration. The hero of his story Arne (1859) expressed his
dissatisfaction in a poem which became the theme song of many
an emigrant:

Out would I, outÑoh, so far, far, far
Over the highest mountains.
Wherever I turn, my path they bar.

Bjørnson wanted his readers to stay in Norway, and
he taught his hero to find himself a niche in the homeland.
But another poet was less complacent: Aasmund Vinje was him
self a cotterÕs son and knew the grinding effect of poverty.
He not only thought of emigrating himself, but seriously recommended
it to others. "As long as people are ignorant,"
he wrote, "they sit at home and grow on the same spot
like grass and trees. But when they get to learn something
and think about things, they pull up stakes and look for a
better home. They donÕt always find it, but they have to try.
That is why emigration is a sign of enlightenment and intelligence.
. . . As I began to learn, I felt a mighty urge to leave my
valley, go to America or anywhere, just so I didnÕt have to
stay at home where I found nothing to do. If I had not learned
anything, I might have hired out to the parson, or gotten
me a wife and a measly patch of a farm. I donÕt [7] deny that
this might have been just as good for me. But it was impossible.
Thought had cast its fiery spark into me."

Horizons were opening up for the Norwegian people. The country
lad of 1820 had accepted as a matter of course the cultural
and economic traditions of his community. He had spoken the
speech of his parish, and observed its ways from birth to
death. But by 1870 he was being endowed with more freedom
and less security. Even if he wished to stay on the farm,
he might not be able to do so. Very often he did not want
to, for he was stirred by the promise of brighter lights:
he might go to school, learn a handicraft, or work in an office;
he might live in town, or go to sea; with luck he might even
rise to prominence in the affairs of his country; or he might
gamble with America for a share in her fabled surplus. Emigration
became one of the many expressions of the peaceful social
revolution that transformed Norwegian society in the nineteenth
century.

It seems clear, then, that Norwegians did not emigrate primarily
because they were oppressed, or persecuted, or poverty-stricken.
It is true that many of them were under privileged; but so
had their ancestors been and had humbly accepted it as the
will of God. Economic and social conditions in Norway were
actually better than in most European countries; and it was
not the poor alone who emigrated. But the men of the nineteenth
century were like Adam and Eve after they had tasted the apple
of knowledge: they suddenly discovered that they were hungry.
The apple they ate was the news of America which came to them
through their newly founded newspapers, their improved school
systems, their previously migrated relatives, the letters
and books about America. They emigrated because they had learned
to be dissatisfied, and because a changing world had provided
them with a hope of escape from their dissatisfaction.

Neither did they emigrate because they were sons of the [8]
seafaring vikings of old. The earliest emigrants were men
who chafed under an economy which offered them and their sons
little hope of social betterment. From their meager holdings
they looked over to the untouched land on the American frontier.
In this new society the rewards would not all be won by such
capriciously distributed qualifications as wealth, birth,
or genius. Comfort and distinction might be gained by the
more democratically widespread qualities of a strong arm,
a determined will, and a strict husbandry. These hardheaded
sons of the soil could for the first time allow themselves
the luxury of being dissatisfied with what fate had allotted
them. Their turn had come to join the movement to America
which one authority has called "mass proletarian emigration."

II. A CENTURY OF MIGRATION

The Mayflower of the Norwegians bore the resounding name
of the "Restauration," but she was no impressive
vessel: less than forty tons, a mere fifty-four feet long.
When she docked in New York harbor on October 9, 1825, she
was loaded to the gunwales with a cargo of iron, seven sailors,
forty-five religious dissenters, and a newborn babe. She made
good copy for a New York reporter, who found her "a novel
sight." "The appearance of such a party of strangers,"
he wrote, ". . . from so distant a country . . . in a
vessel of a size apparently ill calculated for a voyage across
the Atlantic . . . argues a good deal of boldness . . . as
well as an adventurous spirit in the passengers." His
piece was reprinted in so many papers that a week later he
came back with more information: they were bound for the state
of New York, where an agent had been sent to buy land. "They
belong to a religion called the Saints, corresponding in many
points to the principles of the Friends. . . . We understand
. . . that they will shortly be succeeded by a much larger
body of emigrants." [9]

It took eleven years before this promise was fulfilled. Norwegians
were not in a hurry to believe the tales of America. It was
not until results were clearly available from this first group
experiment that they were ready to venture across in any numbers.
The pathfinder of the Stavanger settlers of 1825 had been
Cleng Peerson, the mercurial, irrepressible, vagabond-like
Daniel Boone of Norwegian migration. When they decided that
New York was not to their liking, he sought out rich, unoccupied
soil for them in north central Illinois. He caught up with
the American frontier as it was about to round the southern
tip of Lake Michigan, and made this frontier the Promised
Land of Norwegians for sixty years to come. Six of the Stavanger
families moved to Illinois in 1834 and became the advance
guard of hundreds of thousands.

Within the year these settlers were writing letters to their
friends and kin in Norway, letters which were copied and circulated
by the hundreds. In 1835 one of their number visited Norway;
when he came back in 1836, he brought with him close to two
hundred farmers from his immediate neighborhood. After this
year there was no cessation. One can trace on a map of Norway
the spread of "America fever" from district to district,
as news of the experiences of the settlers spread outward
from Stavanger in ever-widening circles. What had been but
a remote rumor now became credible fact, when men of the farmersÕ
own class, their own neighbors and friends whom they trusted,
told them by letter and word of mouth of the new possibilities.
In this way one can trace the strands of human influence which
reached from the first emigrants down to the mass migration
of later years.

Statistically regarded, the course of Norwegian migration
has not been a smooth one. It presents the familiar picture
of a series of camelÕs humps, with the largest in the middle.
The movement may be compared to a pageant in five acts, [10]
where the intermissions were created by two wars and two depressions.
The general picture will appear from the accompanying chart,
and will find confirmation in the figures of Table 1. It corresponds
well with the general curve of European migration to the United
States, and it shows a close dependence on American business
cycles.

Act I, down to the Civil War, was the period of beginnings,
with many fumbling settlements which had to be abandoned,
until trial and error had established the main course of migration
and located the old Norwegian settlements of Illinois, Wisconsin,
and Minnesota, which became mother settlements to the rest.
The settlers were drawn largely from the southwest and central
mountain regions of Norway; they were family men, who had
ventured into the great unknown in a period when migration
was attended by extraordinary perils on sea and land. In 1850,
Wisconsin was the home of two thirds of the Norwegian settlers;
ten years later her share had fallen to one half, although
the number had doubled. In this period was built the first
Norwegian church (1844) and was published the first Norwegian
newspaper (1847); the first Norwegian member of a state legislature
was elected (1849); and the first Norwegian volunteer regiment
in an American war, the Fifteenth Wisconsin, was organized
(1861).

Act II was opened by the Homestead Act of 1862, which made
free land available to every sincere

settler. Now the Norwegians were really ready to come. Well-established
settlements of their own people assured them of bases from
which they could investigate the unknown lands on the frontier.
The early corners had grown prosperous enough to send tickets
home. English steamship lines and American frontier states
sought to entice as many immigrants as possible. American
railroads were pushing lines in all directions over the prairie.
Norwegian society had been set in motion [11]

by the industrial transformation which began in the fifties
so that large portions of her farming population went scurrying
either to the cities or to America. WisconsinÕs Norwegians
were again doubled, but Minnesota was now close behind, and
the first thrusts into Dakota had begun. The church was so
greatly strengthened that it established a series of higher
schools. The first really enduring newspapers were founded
and grew apace on the crest of this great second wave of Norwegian
immigration. The Panic of 1873, [12] however, brought the
second act to a close and frightened many would-be emigrants
out of their resolve.

Act III began around 1879, when confidence in America was
once more restored, and for the next fourteen years, in spite
of good times and the extension of political democracy in
Norway, America drew off every year two thirds of Nor wayÕs
population increase, or more than at any other period. Settlement
flowed relentlessly westward; from southern Minnesota and
northern Iowa the settlers jumped right into the Red River
Valley, making western Minnesota and the Dakotas their very
own land. All parts of Norway were now giving up their share,
city and country alike in unprecedented numbers; but the American
frontier was petering out, and soon the immigrants were no
longer seeking it with the same glad abandon. Urban colonies
began to spring up in such Midwestern centers as Chicago and
Minneapolis, and land had lost much of its lure in comparison
with city wages. These later immigrants were children of a
new age in Norway, an exciting era of industrial expansion,
democratic agitation, and broadening education. For the first
time the Norwegian-American world saw also a true cultural
flowering in its midst: novels of immigrant life, the beginnings
of historical study, English translations of famous Norwegian
writers.

Again a depression intervened to slow the stream of immigration;
but in 1899 the fourth great wave set in. Act IV was a part
of that prewar urban exodus which also brought to America
huge numbers from southern and eastern Europe. There was now
only one frontier left, the mountain regions of the Northwest
and the plains of western Canada. For the first time the mountaineers
of Norway sought the mountains of America; Idaho, Montana,
Oregon, and especially Washington received some thousands
of land seekers each. But the pickings were thin, and the
mass of the immigrants over flowed into the cities. Brooklyn
on the east coast and Seattle [13] on the west rose into prominence
as cities with large Norwegian populations. These immigrants
were, more than ever, unmarried persons, ambitious to make
money and in many cases determined to go back home when they
had made their pile. Their roots were less deep, more urban,
than those of an earlier vintage; they had less of the high
seriousness of the early pioneers. These years brought with
them the most flourishing period in Norwegian-American culture,
a period of great undertakings in literature and journalism,
which reached its culmination in the centennial celebration
of Norwegian independence in 1914, on the eve of the First
World War.

Act V was the last, hardly more than a postwar aftermath.
American immigration restrictions reflected a new fear that
more immigration would mean a lowering of living standards.
The immigrants of this period consisted more of women and
older people; it was a family migration, bringing families
together which had been separated, or making families which
had been planned before emigration. In Norwegian-American
life there was a marked retreat from the flourishing state
of prewar days. Americanization hysteria induced by the war
acted to hasten the natural urge of the American born to abandon
their special traditions. The restriction of immigration was
the handwriting on the wall, which is strongly reflected in
the literature and historical writing that fills this last
period. Institutions like the church rapidly turned to English,
while foreign-language newspapers gradually lost strength.
A century of bilingual living was about to be written off,
but not before witnessing the greatest united effort of Norwegians
in America, the Norse-American Centennial of 1925 in St. Paul.

A glance at the figures in Table 1 will reveal the magnitude
of this century-long migration. Between 1836 and 1930 the
authorities of Norway counted 852,142 emigrants. Through a
period of ninety-five years an average of 9,033 [14]

Norwegians sailed across the sea every year. These did not
all go to the United States; they scattered over the entire
globe, some 3,000 to Australia, 40,000 to Canada, a handful
everywhere. But the overwhelming bulk of them did enter the
United States, at least 810,000 by 1930. Since less than 10
per cent of these returned to Norway, this means that Norway
has contributed a good three-quarter million to the American
melting pot.

When this is compared with the contribution of other European
nations it does not bulk too large. Even at its height, in
the 80Õs, the Norwegian stream was no more than 3.1 per cent
of the total European migration. But no country except Ireland
had a higher rate of emigration: in the 80Õs eleven out of
every thousand Norwegians were leaving [15] annually, compared
to sixteen Irishmen, six Englishmen, six Swedes, and four
Germans. An even more startling way of regarding it is to
note that through a century of huge population growth, Norway
lost one third of her natural increase, or altogether a number
nearly equal to her total population in 1800.

III. THE NORWEGIAN COMMUNITY IN AMERICA

Norwegian migration has left its clear impress on the composition
of the American people, especially in the Middle West. As
late as 1940 there were still 658,220 Americans who declared
Norwegian as the language of their childhood home. The number
of first-generation Norwegians in the United States reached
a high point of 403,858 in 1910 and declined to 262,088 by
1940. The number of their American-born children reached a
high point of 752,236 in 1930 and declined to 662,600 in 1950.
We can only guess at the number of their childrenÕs children.
But we can hardly be far wrong in estimating the Norwegian
stock at close to two and a half million, or more than twice
the entire population of Norway at the time when emigration
began.

Behind these statistics we glimpse a myriad of men and women
with the most varying personal characteristics. Nothing that
one could say about any one of them would be true of all.
For one thing, they are not nearly so blonde or blue-eyed
as common belief makes them. Most of them did, however, bring
into American life an overwhelming sturdiness and intensity
of purpose. This was an indispensable asset to immigrants
who were at once assigned the heaviest labor and the hardest
tasks. In the earlier days of immigration, seven out of eight
were from the countryside; three out of five were men; the
bulk of them were unmarried and in their best working years.
They came from agriculture and sailing, later from industry
as well. They were not the poorest of their people and they
were not without schooling. Most of them were orthodox Lutherans,
but inclined to their own [16] opinions on interpretation.
A taste for hard liquor among some was offset by strongly
Puritanic traditions among many.

They took hold of the wind-swept prairie of Illinois, Iowa,
Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Dakota with little more than their
bare hands. Their first shelter was the lowly sod hut or the
ramshackle log cabin, and their nearest neighbors were the
timber wolf and the Indian. They cleared their claims with
simple tools and they hauled their grain to market behind
a pair of oxen. Cholera and the ague attacked them along with
a host of other plagues of primitive life. In winter many
of them had to leave their families to earn cash for next
yearÕs seed corn in logging camps, canal construction, railroad
gangs. Fear, hunger, loneliness were part of their regular
diet, thousands of miles away from their own kin and the fond,
familiar places of childhood. They grew out of these conditions
into more comfortable days; one might almost say they grew
up with the country. As for the later immigrants who chose
the city, they had fewer hardships, but a no more enthusiastic
welcome, for there was no free soil for them. They found their
work where they could get it, and they won their place by
patience, strength, and thrift.

American statistics show that half of them are still living
on the soil or in towns of less than 2,500; that in the cities
they are most frequently found as skilled laborers; that they
have developed a respectable number of professional and educated
men; that they stand high in home ownership, in naturalization,
in freedom from poverty and crime. On the American seaboard,
east and west, they have contributed to the advancement of
sailing and fishing. In their agricultural progress they have
been thrifty; their willingness to shift from a failing wheat
crop to dairying, tobacco raising, and other newer forms of
agriculture suggests alertness and enterprise. Their well-kept,
prosperous-looking farms dot the prairies of the Middle West.
Grasshoppers, hail, and prairie [17]

fire could not drive them from the soil. Even the years of
the dust bowl have come and gone, only to leave the Norwegians
still the leading foreign element in North and South Dakota.
[18]

Fortunately the Norwegian immigrants also numbered in their
midst individuals who possessed gifts beyond the dream of
the valuable, but less exciting personalities which constitute
the general run. A steady procession of highly and partially
educated men, of cranks and geniuses, of fiddlers and storytellers,
of saints and sinners have enlivened the scene of the Norwegian-American
world. Many remarkable comedies and some pitiful tragedies
have been enacted among these immigrants. Norwegian-American
society has not been one to treat budding genius tenderly
or cater to the more delicate aspects of culture. Those who
had the toughness to survive frequently reached fame. Among
these one feels impelled to mention one of AmericaÕs most
original economic thinkers, Thorstein Veblen, who first learned
to look with suspicion on the "conspicuous waste"
of American society as a lad on his Norwegian-American fatherÕs
farm. Another was Andrew Furuseth, who as president of the
SeamenÕs Union fought for livable conditions for American
seamen.

It would be pointless to go on and enumerate "famous
Norwegians" in America, as is so often done in apologias
for foreign groups. It is a matter of course that among all
these citizens of normal and solid accomplishment there have
been many with outstanding talents and a few who nourished
the spark of genius. There are today admirals, senators, governors,
congressmen, scholars, actors, inventors, manufacturers, judges,
indeed every species of distinction among those of Norwegian
stock. What these men have done they have usually done as
Americans. But the fact that they have done it has been a
source of pride to the immigrants, because it somehow made
them feel as if they thereby belonged in a more real sense
to America. Lutheran Norwegians were pleased that Notre Dame,
a Catholic school, won football games Ñ because the coach
was Knute Rockne; they enjoyed pseudo-Norwegian films because
Sonja Henie skated in them; they listened to difficult German
operas because Kirsten [19] Flagstad sang them; and they repeated
with undiluted pride that if MinnesotaÕs late Senator Knute
Nelson had only been born in America, "he might have
been president."

IV. IMMIGRANT INSTITUTIONS

This sense of national pride has been strongly nourished
by the accomplishments of the institutions which have grown
out of Norwegian group life in America. Many Norwegians were
readily dispersed into American life, with comparatively rapid
effacement of their native personality. But most of them found
it neither easy nor appealing to plunge headlong from one
culture into another. Even when the immigrantÕs outward life
was regulated to conform exactly with that of his American
neighbor, he could not at once find full satisfaction for
his cultural and spiritual needs. He could not toss his old
self, the memories of home and school and friends, overboard
when he walked down the gangplank.

So he sought the company of his fellow countrymen, where
his own personality could unfold and the accents of speech
were familiar and beloved. Americans have often complained
at the clannishness of foreign groups, overlooking, in the
words of H. H. Boyesen, that "the immigrant, of whatever
nationality, has no choice but to be clannish, unless he chooses
to associate with those who look down upon him." The
Norwegians chose to live near one another and to create churches,
newspapers, and societies which might minister to their own
special needs. These they patronized to whatever extent they
felt a craving for a common bond with one another and with
their Norwegian past. Statistics point to a heightened incidence
of insanity among immigrants, and the immigrant social order
served the purpose of sheltering the immigrantÕs personality
while it was being transferred from the old soil to the new.

The first and most persistent of the immigrantÕs institutions
was the Lutheran Church. America invited [20] experimentation
in religious matters, and many of the earliest settlers succumbed
to the "lures" of non-Lutheran churches. Within
ten years of the founding of the first settlement in Illinois,
however, there were three Lutheran preachers on the scene,
ready to organize Norwegian Lutheranism on a free-church basis
among their "misguided and perverted countrymen."
Here the Norwegian pioneer found a natural center for his
social and religious cravings. In the words of one writer:
"It was the only general meeting place for the whole
settlement. . . . If one did not come to worship God, one
might come for other purposes, such as trading horses, assigning
road work, hiring thrashers, or hearing the latest news."
The church provided an outlet for much of the social energy
of the immigrants. It gave full play to a certain streak of
contentiousness which is part of the individualism of the
Norwegian. Again and again the Norwegian world was rocked
by violent religious controversy, bringing into the open an
opposition between low and high church which in Norway had
dwelt comfortably within the folds of the state church. It
is very likely that much of this could have been avoided had
not a group of the most conservative Norwegian church leaders
fallen under the influence of the German Missouri Synod and
taught views which were distasteful to the mass of the Norwegian
laity. In any case the energy with which the battle was fought
bore testimony to the earnestness of religious interests among
the immigrants, and their unwillingness to accept dictation
from above. Its effectiveness in arousing churchly loyalty
is shown by the fact that the more numerous Swedes have only
396,999 members in their leading Lutheran church body, while
the Norwegians have 661,855 in theirs. Hospitals, orphanages,
old peopleÕs homes, and a host of other charitable enterprises
are churchly by-products which testify to the piety of the
laymen and the enterprise of their leaders.

One of the chief tasks that faced the church was the [21]
training of competent pastors and laymen in the local congregations.
The first successful solution was the establishment of Luther
College, now at Decorah, Iowa, in 1861. This school was wholly
in the spirit of the Norwegian Latin school, and provided
a severely classical and linguistic training. It was followed
by other schools, notably St. Olaf College, at North field,
Minnesota, which was coeducational and less severely classical;
it dates from 1875 and has grown to be the out standing Norwegian-American
church college, with national fame for its a capella choir
under F. Melius Christiansen, and for its great author of
pioneer novels, O. E. Rølvaag. These colleges and the
many others established by Norwegian church leaders have gradually
fallen into the pattern of the American liberal arts college,
retaining only as much of the religious and national tinge
as their constituents require. Courses in Norwegian established
in American state universities are evidence that some members
of the group also took an interest in these institutions.

There have been secular societies aplenty, though most of
them seem destined to less permanence than the church. Many
a local community has had its musical fare enriched by the
Norwegian tradition of male chorus singing, which was transplanted
to America in 1869. All America has reason to be grateful
for the pioneer work done in the 80Õs by Norwegian ski clubs
and ski manufacturers in introducing and nurturing the sport
until America was ready to adopt it as her own. Perhaps the
chief secular organization today is the Sons of Norway, a
fraternal organization closely modeled on similar American
brotherhoods. In general, the Norwegians have quickly learned
the American habit of "joining"; in the years since
1900 and particularly in the cities these organizations have
provided the chief cohesive force among emigrants from Norway.
Their programs and performances have not always been impressive;
but they have provided shelter and training for Americans
in the making. [22]

The same has been true of the immigrant press. Several hundred
newspapers have ministered to the Norwegians with more devotion
than financial reward. In general the press has made it possible
for a secular intelligentsia to exist among the immigrants.
Men with some academic training were thus frequently able
to devote themselves to writing; many of them were gifted
with poetic and literary talent. Today only two newspapers
of general distribution survive the falling by the wayside
that has struck the press in recent years. One is Decorah-posten,
of Decorah, Iowa, which makes its strongest appeal to the
old immigration of the Middle West; the other is Nordisk tidende
of Brooklyn, an organ of the newest immigration.

Many efforts have been made to depict the peculiar quality
of the bilingual world in which the immigrants and many of
their children have lived. Gifted and observant storytellers
have tackled the job of portraying that inner conflict of
personalities which is part of the immigrantÕs special problem.
They have emphasized again and again the note of yearning
for the lost homeland, which mingles with a quite different
note of self-assertion. There is a pride of accomplishment
which sustains the immigrant through all difficulties and
provides a corrective to his nostalgia. The classic example
of literary treatment is O. E. RølvaagÕs Giants in
the Earth, which raised the conflicts of pioneering out of
the moment into a perspective of the eternal. Historians have
also assessed the problem, delving into the story of immigration
and pioneering in a determined search for underlying trends
and causes. The compilation of data began in the 60Õs, while
the first pioneers were still alive, and has never ceased.
Since the organization in 1925 of a vigorous historical society,
the Norwegian-American Historical Association, a period of
genuinely fruitful historical research has been inaugurated.
It is safe to say that more is known today about the history
of the Norwegian group than any other immigrant nationality
in the United States.

Note

<11> This essay comprises the second chapter of Professor
Einar HaugenÕs recently published two-volume work on The Norwegian
Language in America: A Study in Bilingual Behavior (University
of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1958). The book is sponsored
by the American Institute of the University of Oslo in co-operation
with the department of American civilization in the graduate
school of arts and sciences of the University of Pennsylvania,
and permission to reprint chapter 2 has been given the Norwegian-American
Historical Association by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
In reprinting, it has been deemed advisable to omit the original
footnotes and one map as well as a final paragraph which forms
a connecting link with later chapters. The essay is included
in the present series because it is a comprehensive survey
in brief compass of Norwegian emigration, done with genuine
insight and broad knowledge of the entire field. It may be
taken as a fair sample of the high quality of the notable
monograph from which it is drawn Ñ a scholarly and definitive
study that integrates linguistic findings with social and
cultural history. In its totality Dr. HaugenÕs book is one
of the greatest of contributions to Norwegian-American history.
T.C.B.